to the increase of the funds which are
destined to the payment of wages. These
funds are of two kinds; first, the revenue
which is over and above what is necessary for
the maintenance; and, secondly, the stock
which is over and above what is necessary for
the employment of their masters.
When the landlord, annuitant, or monied
man, has a greater revenue than what he
judges sufficient to maintain his own family,
he employs either the whole or a part of the
surplus in maintaining one or more menial
servants. Increase this surplus, and he will
naturally increase the number of those servants.
When an independent workman, such as a
weaver or shoemaker, has got more stock
than what is sufficient to purchase the materials
of his own work, and to maintain himself
till he can dispose of it, he naturally employs
one or more journeymen with the surplus,
in order to make a profit by their work.
Increase this surplus, and he will naturally
increase the number of his journeymen.
The demand for those who live by wages,
therefore, necessarily increases with the increase
of the revenue and stock of every
country, and cannot possibly increase without
it. The increase of revenue and stock is the
increase of national wealth. The demand for
those who live by wages, therefore, naturally
increases with the increase of national wealth,
and cannot possibly increase without it.
It is not the actual greatness of national
wealth, but its continual increase, which occasions
a rise in the wages of labour. It is
not, accordingly, in the richest countries,
in the most thriving, or in those which are
growing rich the fastest, that the wages of labour
are highest. England is certainly, in
the present times, a much richer country than
any part of North America. The wages of
labour, however, are much higher in North
America than in any part of England. In
the province of New York, common labourers
earn[8] three shillings and sixpence currency,
equal to two shillings sterling, a-day; ship-carpenters,
ten shillings and sixpence currency,
with a pint of rum, worth sixpence sterling,
equal in all to six shillings and sixpence
sterling; house-carpenters and bricklayers,
eight shillings currency, equal to four shillings
and sixpence sterling; journeymen tailors,
five shillings currency, equal to about
two shillings and tenpence sterling. These
prices are all above the London price; and
wages are said to be as high in the other colonies
as in New York. The price of provisions
is everywhere in North America much
lower than in England. A dearth has never
been known there. In the worst seasons
they have always had a sufficiency for themselves,
though less for exportation. If the
money price of labour, therefore, be higher
than it is anywhere in the mother-country,
its real price, the real command of the necessaries
and conveniencies of life which it conveys
to the labourer, must be higher in a still
greater proportion.
But though North America is not yet so
rich as England, it is much more thriving,
and advancing with much greater rapidity
to the further acquisition of riches. The
most decisive mark of the prosperity of any
country is the increase of the number of its
inhabitants. In Great Britain, and most
other European countries, they are not supposed
to double in less than five hundred
years. In the British colonies in North
America, it has been found that they double
in twenty or five-and-twenty years. Nor in
the present times is this increase principally
owing to the continual importation of new
inhabitants, but to the great multiplication of
the species. Those who live to old age, it is
said, frequently see there from fifty to a hundred,
and sometimes many more, descendants
from their own body. Labour is there so
well rewarded, that a numerous family of
children, instead of being a burden, is a source
of opulence and prosperity to the parents.
The labour of each child, before it can leave
their house, is computed to be worth a hundred
pounds clear gain to them. A young
widow with four or five young children, who,
among the middling or inferior ranks of people
in Europe, would have so little chance for
a second husband, is there frequently courted
as a sort of fortune. The value of children is
the greatest of all encouragements to marriage.
We cannot, therefore, wonder that the people
in North America should generally marry
very young. Notwithstanding the great increase
occasioned by such early marriages,
there is a continual complaint of the scarcity
of hands in North America. The demand
for labourers, the funds destined for maintaining
them increase, it seems, still faster
than they can find labourers to employ.
Though the wealth of a country should be
very great, yet if it has been long stationary,
we must not expect to find the wages of labour
very high in it. The funds destined for
the payment of wages, the revenue and stock
of its inhabitants, may be of the greatest extent;
but if they have continued for several
centuries of the same, or very nearly of the
same extent, the number of labourers employed
every year could easily supply, and even
more than supply, the number wanted the
following year. There could seldom be any
scarcity of hands, nor could the masters be
obliged to bid against one another in order to
get them. The hands, on the contrary, would,
in this case, naturally multiply beyond their
employment. There would be a constant
scarcity of employment, and the labourers